This handout illustration provided by San Diego State University, shows a newly discovered planets

Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society‘s conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom. One study shows that in our Milky Way, most stars have planets. And since there are a lot of stars in our galaxy — about 100 billion — that means a lot of planets.

“We’re finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn’t even think could exist,” said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror “Star Wars” Luke Skywalker’s home planet with twin suns and a mini-star system with a dwarf sun and shrunken planets.

“We’re awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren’t even sure there were planets” outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

Astronomers are finding other worlds using three different techniques and peering through telescopes in space and on the ground. Confirmed planets outside our solar system — called exoplanets — now number well over 700, still-to-be-confirmed ones are in the thousands.

This 2011 handout photo provided by the European Southern Observatory, shows the Milky Way above the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

NASA’s new Kepler planet-hunting telescope in space is discovering exoplanets that are in a zone friendly to life and detecting planets as small as Earth or even tinier. That is moving the field of looking for some kind of life outside Earth from science fiction toward plain science.

One study in Nature this week figures that the Milky Way averages at least 1.6 large planets per star. And that is likely a dramatic underestimate.

That study is based on only one intricate and time-consuming method of planet hunting that uses several South American, African and Australian telescopes. Astronomers look for increases in brightness of distant stars that indicate planets between Earth and that pulsating star. That technique usually finds only bigger planets and is good at finding those further away from their stars, sort of like our Saturn or Uranus.

Kepler and a different ground-based telescope technique are finding planets closer to their stars. Putting those methods together, the number of worlds in our galaxy is probably much closer to two or more planets per star, said the Nature study author Arnaud Cassan of the Astrophysical Institute in Paris.

Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at the University of California Berkeley’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence program and who wasn’t part of the studies, was thrilled: “It’s great to know that there are planets out there that we can point our telescopes at.”

Kepler also found three rocky planets — tinier than Earth — that are circling a dwarf star that itself is only a bit bigger than Jupiter. They are so close to their small star that they are too hot for life.

“It’s like you took your shrink ray gun and you set it to seven times smaller and zap the planetary system,” said California Institute of Technology astronomer John Johnson, co-author of the study presented Wednesday at the astronomy conference.

Because it is so hard to see these size planets, they must be pretty plentiful, Johnson said. “It’s kind of like cockroaches. If you see one, then there are dozens hiding.”

It’s not just the number or size of planets, but where they are found. Scientists once thought systems with two stars were just too chaotic to have planets nearby. But so far, astronomers have found three different systems where planets have two suns, something that a few years ago seemed like purely “Star Wars” movie magic.

“Nature must like to form planets because it’s forming them in places that are kind of difficult to do,” said San Diego State University astronomy professor William Welsh, who wrote a study about planets with two stars that’s also published in the journal Nature.

The gravity of two stars makes the area near them unstable, Welsh said. So astronomers thought that if a planet formed in that area, it would be torn apart.

Late last year, Kepler telescope found one system with two stars. It was considered a freak. Then Welsh used Kepler to find two more. Now Welsh figures such planetary systems, while not common, are not rare either.

“It just feels like it’s inevitable that Kepler is going to come up with a habitable Earth-sized planet in the next couple of years,” Caltech’s Johnson said.

Source: Yahoo News

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What the photographer says:

‘When I travelled to see the total solar eclipse of 11 July 2010, I stayed in Oneroa village on the west coast of Mangaia, Cook Islands. This is how the sky looked from a relatively open area just outside Oneroa village.’

Hutech modified Canon 5D DSLR camera with a 24 mm lens – What it shows:

Forming a dramatic backdrop to a tropical skyline, the Milky Way galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars in a disc-like structure. Our Sun lies within the disc, about two-thirds of the way out from the centre, so we see it as a bright band encircling the sky. This southern hemisphere view highlights dark clouds of dust that aboriginal Australian astronomers called the ‘Emu in the sky’.

What the judges say:

Will Gater says: ‘This beautiful image has a truly magical feel to it. I love how the rich star fields of the Milky Way appear to follow the line of the horizon. Look closely and you’ll see many pink nebulae nestled within our galaxy’s spiral arms.’

What Flickr members say:

Ayiomamitis says: ‘WoW!…Truly outstanding in every sense of the word. Great composition and equally great execution.’

Source: NMM UK

Alignment of Earth and Jupiter as seen from Mars

Because Jupiter is over 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, two different exposures were needed to image the two planets. The composite has been highly contrast-enhanced and “colorized” to show both planets and their satellites. The MGS MOC high resolution camera only takes grayscale (black-and-white) images; the color was derived from Mariner 10 and Cassini pictures of Earth/Moon and Jupiter, respectively.

Earth/Moon: This is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that actually shows our home as a planetary disk. Because Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth. As seen from Mars by MGS on 8 May 2003 at 13:00 GMT (6:00 AM PDT), Earth and the Moon appeared in the evening sky. The MOC Earth/Moon image has been specially processed to allow both Earth (with an apparent magnitude of -2.5) and the much darker Moon (with an apparent magnitude of +0.9) to be visible together. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The bright feature near the center-right of the crescent Earth consists of clouds over northern South America. The image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon, since the Moon was on the far side of Earth as viewed from Mars. The slightly lighter tone of the lower portion of the image of the Moon results from the large and conspicuous ray system associated with the crater Tycho.

Jupiter/Galilean Satellites: When Galileo first turned his telescope toward Jupiter four centuries ago, he saw that the giant planet had four large satellites, or moons. These, the largest of dozens of moons that orbit Jupiter, later became known as the Galilean satellites. The larger two, Callisto and Ganymede, are roughly the size of the planet Mercury; the smallest, Io and Europa, are approximately the size of Earth’s Moon. This MGS MOC image, obtained from Mars orbit on 8 May 2003, shows Jupiter and three of the four Galilean satellites: Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. At the time, Io was behind Jupiter as seen from Mars, and Jupiter’s giant red spot had rotated out of view. This image has been specially processed to show both Jupiter and its satellites, since Jupiter, at an apparent magnitude of -1.8, was much brighter than the three satellites.

Ultimately, to answer the question What does Earth, Jupiter and their moons, look like when viewed from Mars? Mosaiced together, the images are shown below | Click to Enlarge :O

Source: MSSS

The free iCloud Services include:

• The former MobileMe services – Using this service, users can share their calendars and contacts with friends and family members. The mailbox and other information are kept up-to-date across all the devices and laptops. The previously provided MobileMe services are now completely re-structured to work seamlessly with iCloud.

• The App Store and iBookstore – Now you can download all your iOS applications and books directly to all your devices at no additional cost by simple tapping the iCloud icon. This service allows you to see your purchase and download history.

• iCloud Backup – You can now easily have a backup data of your music files, applications, books and other contents using your iCloud services. By doing so, the data backup of iPods, iPhone and iPads can easily be done on the iCloud platform.

• iCloud Storage – This functionality allows you to conveniently store all your documents and applications using your iCloud APIs and automatically synchronizes them to other devices. In other words, changing a document on one device automatically changes that document on all your devices.

Cost

Apple has already invested over $500 millions in its Maiden data center to meet the customer demand of iCloud service. However, as per the decision of Apple, iCloud will be free of cost to the users who purchase music at the iTunes music store. Although buying iCloud services subsequently may cost the users $25 per year.

The Timelines

The launch of the iCloud services is only delayed till both the Apple and the publishers settle on the monetary part. However that may still take some time before Apple rolls out its new service to the customers. Company believes that it will be able to introduce the service for its Developers centre somewhere by July 2011. However users will be able to enjoy it only when both the publishers and Apple come on the same page with latter bringing the former on board.

The caps can grow to as large as 2 cm (about 1 inch) in diameter, but because the mushrooms are prone to dehydration, they only have a few days to live once the rain stops. The tiny mushroom is one of seven new species of glow-in-the-dark fungi found around the world, bringing the total known to 71. Just goes to show you that the curiosities of the world never cease! Time to explore the world!

Source: National Geography via Slightlywarped

This system utilizes turbo vacuums and external air-flow to regenerate tank pressure for extended range and increased boost for an estimated 100 miles. To keep the car lightweight, all components are mounted directly to the chassis, eliminating unnecessary structures. The exterior is made from vegetable based plastic wrapped around the body with an open-air style. the concept is estimated to weigh only 800 pounds.

Source: Designboom

This photo shows the martian north polar ice cap with layers of water ice and dust for the first time in perspective view. Here we see cliffs that are almost two kilometres high, and the dark material in the caldera-like structures and dune fields could be volcanic ash. Mars Express also saw fields of volcanic cones, some up to 600 metres high. They appear to indicate very recent volcanic activity. The question remains, is it ongoing activity?

Echus Chasma is the source region of the Kasei Valles channel. This perspective image was taken by Mars Express during orbit 97. It shows that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars thousands of millions of years ago. Gigantic waterfalls poured over the 4000-metre high cliffs, and fed a lake in the valley. Later, when the planet became cooler, the lakes froze and glaciers formed, carving the giant Kasei Valles.

The image above is Kasei Valles, one of the largest outflow channels on Mars, and contains a lot of evidence for glacial and fluvial activity over much of the planet’s history. Kasei Valles has been imaged before by the HRSC during orbit 61 from an altitude of 272 kilometres. These images are located about 29° North and 300° East.

The scour marks in the valley, shown in the image on the left, are most likely due to glacial erosion than by water erosion. This is contrary to what was previously thought. The glacier that caused this valley was fed by water from the Echus Chasma region, which was driven out from underneath the surface by volcanic activity. Water was released by heating from volcanic activity in the channel floor as relatively recently as 20 million years ago.

The crater with ice disc is on the Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes. The crater is 35 km wide, with a maximum depth of about 2 km. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express.

Scientists believe the water-ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states and vaporise into the atmosphere. It is not frozen carbon dioxide, because this type of ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap by the time this image was taken.

Source: European Space Agency Flickr

Putting his finger on the iPad, ready to sketch.

Sketching the Eyes.

One minute has passed.

Nearly 2 minute at this point. Insanely fast.

And the painting was completed in less than four minutes.

YouTube – Yoshitoshi Abe Scribbles with iPad